Spotlight
INDIAN DIPLOMAT
SHRI P. R. S. MANI, Counsellor at the Indian Embassy in Bonn, who has just ended a
three-year assignment in Germany was happy to meet Bombay journalists because he was one of the fraternity before he joined Government service.
He greeted me with the remark: "I was a representative of your paper in South East Asia and I am credited with scooping out one of the best stories of that time". He was referring to the offer made through him by the then Prime Minister of Indonesia, Dr. Sultan Sjahrir, to give India a large quantity of rice at a time when this country was experiencing acute scarcity of food.
The story was first splashed in
the "Free Press Journal" and later attracted banner head-lines in other papers.
Soon after graduation, Shri Mani joined the Army and after the war became a newspaper scribe and joined the staff of the "Free Press." As a representative of that paper, he travelled extensively in South-East Asian countries.
In 1947 he joined the Foreign Service and became a Consul in Indonesia. During the next few years he served as our Consul in Manila and Shanghai until in 1953 he became Commissioner for India in Hongkong.
Later he was appointed as Indian Consul-General in Goa during the hectic days of satyagraha and the ill-fated Indian march to free that territory from Portuguese rule. "That was the most exciting assignment I ever had", remarked the youthful diplomat, with nostalgic longing in his eyes.
But he could not continue the "exciting assignment" for long as, with the closure of our mission there, he was transferred to Bonn. He finds Bonn an interesting place, with people "tremendously friendly" towards India.
"There Is an anxiety to know more and more about India—not the old and ancient India—but the modern India that we are building up", he said. To illustrate the growing German interest in India, he cited a story. A railway gangman once rushed up to him and coming to know that he was an Indian, asked him about Prime Minister Nehru. "We want many Nehrus in the world for the sake of peace among peoples, the railway worker said.
Shri and Smt. Mani have picked up fluent German. "Of course, my wife knows more German than I do", he confessed to me. Shri and Smt. Mani, with their two kids, are now proposing to go on a two-months' leave before going to Delhi.